Kevin may have come off a little fierce about being tied to the fortunes of one company, but it's true. Union factory hands may have been history's best-kept peasantry, but today's techies are the world's highest-paid migrant workers. If you want to survive in business, don't get too attached to your house or land.
I can't believe a rail-car builder could be short of work with a continent-wide shortage of coal and grain carriers. Bombardier is a separate issue, with their long bet on passenger service (anyone notice they've changed the name of their snowmobiles, to prepare that division for sale?). But anyone who can build freight cars should be working overtime. This sounds like a management issue: how much do they lose on each unit they sell? It's pretty cheap to heat 27 acres in Tennessee, and in China it's not even an issue. Plus, you get a thousand year tax write-off for building, and lose the union and the benefits package.
I had a couple drinks with a Nebraska rancher in August who said Wyoming ought to be a mile-deep hole in the ground by now, based on the number of coal trains passing his pasturage. Along Lincoln Highway, it's 5 minutes between trains--in the 70's I used to see high-speed container freights from the coast; now it's nothing but Wyoming coal (or, as Ohio power-plant engineers call it, "dirt.")
It is not any president's job to regulate the economy. A vibrant trade will transcend the worst meddling; a sick market cannot be propped up by any intervention. Other than our thorough-going, Left and Right addiction to praying to Government to cure all ills and cushion all shocks, the biggest obstacle to even-handed policy is not so much the 4-year presidential term, but the constant two-year battle for Congress. And I don't see where popular election of Senators has benefited the republic.